few (journalists)object to the fact that the DOJ is investigating the pro-WikiLeaks attacks, but not -- of course -- the ones directed at WikiLeaks. That's because we collectively believe -- with the establishment media leading the way -- that the most powerful authorities have the unfettered right to do whatever they want to anyone who is sufficiently demonized as Bad, while the worst sin is to do anything outside of approved (i.e., impotent) means to protest establishment power and authority, no matter how destructive and criminal the ends are to which that power and authority is being applied.
This is the same mentality that expresses such self-righteous outrage over the mere prospect that disclosures of the truth by WikiLeaks might hypothetically one day lead to the death of a single innocent person, while barely uttering any real anger over the massive numbers of innocents actually being killed right now by the U.S. Government. And it's the same mentality that purports to acknowledge the massive secrecy abuses, deceit and pervasive crimes of the U.S. Government, while demanding that one of the very few people who apparently risked something to do anything meaningful to stop all of that -- Bradley Manning -- be severely punished, or that Julian Assange be punished. This is authoritarianism in its classic form -- an instinctively servile loyalty to power even when it is acting corruptly, lawlessly and destructively -- and it finds its purest and most vigorous expression in those who most loudly claim devotion to checking it: our intrepid adversarial journalists.
Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com
Julian Assange Editor in Chief WikiLeaks: 'US does not believe in press freedom'
Is Julian Assange a Terrorist? Congressman King
Hillary Clinton upset that wikileaks leaked Cables exposes the lies, propaganda , disinformation of the US political elite and its elitist allies.
Hillary most upset with the revelations concerning her back door deals and her complete support for the illegal anti-Democratic Coup d'Etat in Honduras and that she and the administration support Israel unconditionally. Yet in public Hillary and her gang may otherwise make strong statements about Israel but it is just hollow meaningless rhetoric spouted as cover for their real intentions.
Killing honest Journalism & Freedom of the Press in America
WikiLeaks Hate From Republicans - Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Bill O'Reilly ,Sara Palin. Mitch mcconnell End Freedom of the Press , jail or execute Julian Assange shut down Wikileaks - go after anyone sp[reading these leaked documents
Mainstream Media Facts are relative or when a fact is not a fact
The media's authoritarianism and WikiLeaks by Glenn greenwald, Salon.com, Dec. 10, 2010
After I highlighted the multiple factual inaccuracies in Time's WikiLeaks article yesterday (see Update V) -- and then had an email exchange with its author, Michael Lindenberger -- the magazine has now appended to the article what it is calling a "correction." In reality, the "correction" is nothing of the sort; it is instead a monument to the corrupted premise at the heart of American journalism.
Initially, note that Time has refused to correct its blatantly false claim that WikiLeaks has published "thousands of classified State Department cables" and posted "thousands of secret diplomatic cables" when, in reality, they've posted only 1,269 of the more than 250,000 cables they possess: less than 1/2 of 1 %. It's true that they provided roughly 251,000 cables to five newspapers, but they have only "posted" and "published" roughly 1,200 of them. Time just decided to leave that statement standing even knowing it is factually false.
More significant is the "correction" itself. It applies to Time's clearly false claim of "a distinction between WikiLeaks' indiscriminate posting of the cables . . . and the more careful vetting evidenced by The New York Times." That is false because WikiLeaks' release of cables had not been "indiscriminate" in any sense of the word. As this AP article documents -- and as a casual review of its site independently proves -- WikiLeaks has done very little other than publish the specific cables that have been first released by newspapers around the world, including with the redactions applied by those papers.
So did Time correct its false statement by acknowledging its unquestionable falsity and pointing to the evidence disproving it? Of course not. Instead, they merely noted this at the bottom of the article: "Correction: The story has been amended to reflect the fact that Assange rejects claims that WikiLeaks has 'indiscriminately' dumped documents on its site." They also added to the body of the article a sentence noting that "claims that Assange has simply dumped the documents without reviewing them, much like a traditional editor would, have been disputed" because "Assange himself told TIME that each diplomatic cable his site has published has been vetted by his own team or by the editors of newspapers with whom he has shared the documents."
In other words, the most Time is willing to do -- when forced by public complaints -- is note that "some" people (i.e., Assange) "dispute" the Government's accusatory claims of "indiscriminate" document dumping, ones uncritically amplified by Time and countless other media outlets. The most they're willing to do now is convert it into a "they-said/he-said" dispute. But what they won't do -- under any circumstances -- is state clearly that the Government's accusations are false, even where, as here, they unquestionably are. Anticipating that this would be the "correction" they issued, I even emailed Lindenberger before it was posted and wrote:
One thing, while I have you - the appropriate correction needed is **not** a he-said-/he-said formulation ("we said 'indiscriminate,' but Assange denies this").
That WikiLeaks has (with a handful of exceptions) published ONLY what other newspapers first published is a VERIFIABLE FACT. AP reported it, and all you have to do is look on its website to see that virtually all the cables published were ones first published by the five partner newspapers.
To say "some say 'indiscriminate' while Assange denies this" as a correction is misleading. As a journalist, you should tell your readers the verifiable FACT: that virtually all of the cables published thus far by [WikiLeaks] were first published by these newspapers
and he concludes
Identically, note how few object to the fact that the DOJ is investigating the pro-WikiLeaks attacks, but not -- of course -- the ones directed at WikiLeaks. That's because we collectively believe -- with the establishment media leading the way -- that the most powerful authorities have the unfettered right to do whatever they want to anyone who is sufficiently demonized as Bad, while the worst sin is to do anything outside of approved (i.e., impotent) means to protest establishment power and authority, no matter how destructive and criminal the ends are to which that power and authority is being applied.
This is the same mentality that expresses such self-righteous outrage over the mere prospect that disclosures of the truth by WikiLeaks might hypothetically one day lead to the death of a single innocent person, while barely uttering any real anger over the massive numbers of innocents actually being killed right now by the U.S. Government. And it's the same mentality that purports to acknowledge the massive secrecy abuses, deceit and pervasive crimes of the U.S. Government, while demanding that one of the very few people who apparently risked something to do anything meaningful to stop all of that -- Bradley Manning -- be severely punished, or that Julian Assange be punished. This is authoritarianism in its classic form -- an instinctively servile loyalty to power even when it is acting corruptly, lawlessly and destructively -- and it finds its purest and most vigorous expression in those who most loudly claim devotion to checking it: our intrepid adversarial journalists.
WikiLeaks: Cables Reveal US Military Role in Muslim World by: Shashank Bengali | McClatchy Newspapers | Report ,Dec. 9, 2010
From the Saudi-Yemen border to lawless Somalia and the north-central African desert, the U.S. military is more engaged in armed conflicts in the Muslim world than the U.S. government openly acknowledges, according to cables released by the WikiLeaks website.
U.S. officials have struck relationships with regimes that generally aren't considered allies in the war against terrorism, and while the cables show U.S. diplomats admonishing the regimes to respect the laws of war, they also underscore the perils of using advanced military technologies in complex, remote battlefields with sometimes shifty friends.
Cables released this week indicate that the United States:
* Provided Saudi Arabia with satellite imagery to help direct airstrikes against Shiite rebels after earlier strikes resulted in civilian casualties.
* Collaborated with Algerian forces in 2006 and 2007 to capture militants allegedly bound for Iraq and, more recently, obtained permission to fly U.S. surveillance planes through Algerian airspace to hunt suspected al Qaida members.
* Killed a militant Islamist leader in a 2008 airstrike in Somalia and, later, fielded requests from Somali officials to "take out" more suspected militants.
Another a bit of unwanted truth revealed by Wikileaks US government classified Cables
The Afghan War: Spreading Democracy (and Heroin) by: Ryan Harvey, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis , Dec.10, 2010
Documents made public by WikiLeaks' latest file drop show that Afghan President Hamid Karzai pulled strings several times throughout early 2009 to free numerous drug traffickers with whom he had political or economic ties.
The documents also show that US officials have held multiple high-level meetings with a man widely viewed as one of the country's major heroin dealers.
That man is Ahmed Wali Karzai: He's the half-brother of President Karzai and has been investigated by numerous major newspapers for drug allegations.
Referred to in many US documents as "AWK," Ahmed Wali Karzai, has long been on the radar of government officials and journalists for his off-the-books dealings with local warlords, traffickers, Taliban members and Afghanistan government officials.
Now, previously secret US Embassy documents, made public by WikiLeaks, further these claims. The documents also show that the US has continued to consult with AWK on major infrastructure projects, security contracts and economic plans.
One of the leaked documents is a report from a November 2009 meeting between AWK and the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry. In this document, Eikenberry describes Karzai as being, "... widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker." Nevertheless, he cautions that working with Karzai is a political necessity.
In this meeting, Karzai calls for private "jihadi" mercenaries operating within the region to fall under his control; he also calls for major development projects to be initiated with his oversight. Eikenberry responds, "... given AWK's reputation for shady dealings, his recommendations for large, costly infrastructure projects should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism."
He also notes that Karzai, "... is understood to have a stake in private security contracting ..." and "... both he and the governor have tried to exert control over how contracts are awarded in the province ... all of which could be a significant conflict of interest in the province."
In another document, made public by WikiLeaks, there is a report from a February 2010 meeting with AWK in which, then-Deputy Ambassador to Afghanistan Francis Ricciardone says that Karzai, "... appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities and that the coalition views many of his activities as malign."
This new information linking the Karzai's with the heroin trade supplements previous reports on AWK's operations in Kandahar. It also further emphasizes the realities of the "dirty war" in Afghanistan.
In 2008, The New York Times released reports that Ahmed Wali Karzai was extensively linked to the heroin trade. An investigative report, in late 2009, declared that Karzai was, "... a suspected player in the country's booming illegal opium trade."(1)
Other examples of such immunity were recently made public by WikiLeaks as well.
In April 2009, President Karzai pardoned five border policemen who were caught smuggling 124 kilograms of heroin in their patrol vehicles. They were sentenced to terms of 16 to 18 years each, only to be pardoned by President Karzai shortly after, "on the grounds that they were distantly related to two individuals who had been martyred during the civil war."
Rumors in the US Embassy are that Karzai is also planning on pardoning several other men caught smuggling heroin. One man was a high-ranking police chief and nephew of a member of Parliament, who was caught ordering his men to smuggle heroin. Another man was a "priority DEA target."
The same document says that Karzai tampered with the case of a narcotics trafficker whose father is a wealthy businessman and Karzai supporter. "Without any constitutional authority," the embassy cable says, "Karzai ordered the police to conduct a second investigation which resulted in the conclusion that the defendant had been framed."
These documents come after controversy arose last year when former Afghan Defense Minister and current First Vice President Muhammad Fahim was selected as Karzai's running mate. CIA reports sent to the White House in 2002 suggested that Fahim was involved in narcotics trafficking and, though the White House avoided public criticism, they privately directed American military trainers to work with Fahim's subordinates only, but not with Fahim himself.
President Karzai's other brothers have also made headlines this year for their secret dealings. Abdul Qayum Karzai mediated secret talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia. Mahmood Karzai has come under a federal investigation for tax evasion, racketeering and extortion.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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